


Don't Tell Rose

by sadlikeknives



Category: Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-09 19:23:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16455836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadlikeknives/pseuds/sadlikeknives
Summary: "There's nothing else for it, you'll have to take them.  No one will look for them with you."Shaw vs. small children.





	Don't Tell Rose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thehumantrampoline](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehumantrampoline/gifts).



Abishag Shaw had no idea how he'd gotten himself into this.

Well, no, that wasn't true. He knew exactly how he had gotten himself into this. He could trace it every step of the way back to questioning the piano player after that particular Mardi Gras ball at the Orleans Ballroom, and further back than that to his decision to stay in New Orleans in the first place, all those years ago. It still did not account for how he had found himself smuggling two small black boys into his room at the boarding house on Camp Street in the dead of night, that being the only time he stood a chance of making the journey from the Corbier residence without being seen carrying them. He had tried to tell Olympe Corbier that, after going at Hannibal Sefton's request to inform her of the situation while he dug through the records at the courthouse in an attempt to determine whether there was any truth to the claims or not, and she nodded, her mouth a straight, hard line, her eyes already racing through calculations Shaw could not even imagine and would never have to do, and said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, "There's nothing else for it, you'll have to take them. No one will look for them with you."

"Well, now, that's true, ma'am," he'd said, "because anyone would have to be _crazy_ to leave small children with me. And the boys are in no danger, at any regard. Their ma was born free."

Olympe Corbier had merely given him a look that told him not to be stupid, which was fair enough, because it had been a stupid thing to say. There were a lot of ways men could twist things around and decide Baby Xander and the little Professor weren't free, the simplest of which was to conclude they must be Olympe's children after all, as they were in her custody. Not that he was stupid enough, either, to think that Olympe or any of her children would be anywhere to be found if anyone came to take them into custody, but in that case the little ones would only slow them down. That still did not make this by any stretch a good idea, but Shaw understood what it was to be out of good ideas and making the best of the bad ones you had left. "Rose or I will come and get them, when it's safe," she said, stuffing things into a bag as he protested, fruitlessly, that his home, such as it was, was really not fit for—this was really not a good idea, Madame Corbier— "and I'll come to check on them and feed the baby, or send one of the children by, as I can. Hopefully Hannibal will find something useful at the courthouse, and I can collect the boys and Rose will never have to know about any of this."

"Yes," Shaw agreed, "Yes, that would really be—perhaps I could take them to the Janviers' house?" he suggested, desperate.

"Don't be ridiculous, that's the first place anyone will look. Especially once they own the deed." Shaw had not considered that particularity, but she had a point. He had gone away then with the bag of the children's things, and at the appointed hour, despite everything that said it was a bad idea, gone back. He had intended to renew his objections but he had been given no opportunity to do so. Olympe had opened the back door, looked him up and down, came to some internal conclusion that made the corner of her mouth pinch, and shoved the sleeping baby into his arms, followed by little John, barely awake, leaving him to juggle them around until he had made some kind of sense of the load as she muttered under her breath and in a field hand patois so thick Shaw could barely make it out something about delousing them later. She started to rattle off some instructions about feeding and diapers, then visibly concluded it was useless, even though Shaw had been faithfully inscribing every word she said on his brain, and said, "Just—keep them alive," and closed the door with him and the January children on the other side of it. Like as not, she didn't want him to see what was going on in the house, he thought, for one reason or another. She was, after all, a voodooienne in a tight spot.

Now, it was barely morning, and the boys were awake. Soon he'd have to feed them, and all he knew of what or how to feed Xander was half a sentence about goat milk Olympe had cut herself off in the middle of, as if she'd realized her words were ridiculous even as she said them. He didn't even know where to get goat milk, short of finding and robbing a goat. 

He thought of Olympe's last instructions, to keep them alive, and he thought, _Easier said than done,_ watching John crawl around on the floor, which Shaw most fervently hoped was clean, as Xander began to wiggle in the middle of the nest of blankets Shaw had made for him, which he also fervently hoped was clean. At least he couldn't move around yet. John was easy,for a bit, at least: give him a book and he'd page through it so seriously you'd think he was reading it, as he was doing now in the middle of the floor, even though Shaw was almost certain a child of his age couldn't be reading French yet, never mind English. Eventually, he would probably become adventuresome, and despite the fact that Shaw had, prior to his return to the Corbiers', engaged in some frantic rearrangement of objects to higher parts of the stack of packing crates that served him for shelving, there was still bound to be something he could get into that was sharp or deadly in some regard. Hell, it was entirely conceivable that he could pull the whole arrangement down on himself. He didn't know what he was going to do when he had to leave the room for any of a dozen reasons, although at least he had already told one of the other officers who lived in the boarding house that he thought himself ill, and traded his shift for the day.

"All right," he said, because he felt he ought to say something. The silence was getting downright oppressive. "All right. We're all going to get through this together. Only please don't cry," he told the boys. The Professor looked up at him, solemn as ever, but Xander just cooed, paying him no mind. "I don't think I can convince the landlady either of you is a cat."


End file.
